


Deliverance (Ashes to Ashes)

by Coldest_Fire



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: (canon) death of a LOT of holy people, AU: Spike was a vampire first, Blood and Injury, F/M, Graphic violence in the church Dru was sired in, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Dismemberment, Implied/Referenced Mass Murder, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Stalking, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury Recovery, Religious Discussion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Spike is not judgy about virginity, Trauma, Victorian Attitudes, blasphemous violence, her injuries are described in chapter 1 and 2, theres a probably explicit paragraph describing the aftermath in the church, you can skip that paragraph
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:41:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29595705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: In which Spike was sired long before Dru, and has become the vampire in charge in London, when he hears about a horrific massacre on his turf. What begins as a trip to kill a vampire not acting by his rules changes him permanently. That night in a church full of corpses, Spike finds the real victim of Angelus' depravity, and makes a decision to who he wants to be.She will heal, and she will live to see the devil burn, after years spent on her heels."I can take you somewhere that doesn’t hurt. Healing will take time. It won’t all go away at once, but it will go away. And you will become strong. You will become eternal. You will become like me, and we will find the devil, and we will turn him to dust.”“Ashes to ashes,” she repeated, before taking his hand, though keeping the other hand clasped tightly over her shoulder. “I have to save them,” she insisted. There was a strength in her eyes. Something he’d never seen in someone who undoubtedly hurt so much she could hardly think. “Take me away with you,” she decided.
Relationships: Drusilla/Spike (BtVS)
Kudos: 6





	1. Heaven's Amends: Blood and Bathwater

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all, so this was another 1860 au. I just... wanted anyone to be there for her. 
> 
> Now, in chapter 1, there's a really violent passage. I'd probably consider it explicit? Maybe? It's a description of the dead nuns in the church. It doesn't describe it happening, but it's fairly graphic. the paragraph in question starts with "once he could breathe it in without his gag reflex activating..." and ends at "into the communion cup." it's nonessential if you're not up for it. there's a little more minor gore referenced throughout, but that's the big description. 
> 
> this also deals with religion a bit in Spike's PoV, in what I'd call a fairly disillusioned, against religion kind of way. He is mad that, for all her reference, no one intervened on her behalf. this piece has religious imagery heavily, heavily conflated into trauma, because she was killed in a church. God's not the bad guy--angelus is. But Spike takes a dim view of any powerful being that stood by. 
> 
> it's just probably not a great fic if you aren't up for that as a theme. the ex-catholic in me really found that element cathartic, but it's at least fairly secondary.

London would always feel like home. The streets, however they changed, were familiar. He knew the chips in brick facades. Knew windows that had been smashed in, to loot railroad spikes, or quills, or once, the complete works of William Shakespeare. Or Blake. Or Wordsworth.

These same streets were where a fourth William, the bloody, made his name as Spike.

And he was bloody tired of other vampires crossing into his town, painting the streets red, and leaving him to deal with the bloody mob. He’d been after one for five years. Some grandstanding pillock who was leaving hearts and half-open bodies in some neighbourhood where he later left a house full of corpses. Spike had to feed only out of town for _months_. The white hats scoured the place. Nearly ruined all his haunts. After years free of it, it started happening again. A whole bleeding nativity scene, literally bleeding all over the snow. Body parts left like gag gifts around a particular convent, which, after what he’d done now wasn’t even news.

Not now that he’d massacred the whole bloody church-load of them. If the watcher’s council wasn’t already crawling up his ass trying to stop him, this latest stunt threw fuel on the fire. And it wasn’t his lucky day, because a bastard like him that leaves trails of gag-gifts makes a name as well. Seems there was an _angel_ in that church.

_Angelus. The scourge of Europe._ The inciter of riots, mobs, and _slayers,_ and worse, zealots that nailed their crosses to everything fun. His little spree had gotten old, and Spike wasn’t having any more of it. Endangering the whole lot of them, because he liked to make a spectacle of himself. He’d learn what that attention earned him in Spike’s London.

He leapt down from the awning he’d been watching the streets from, feet hitting the stone road with a light thump, the balls of his feet catching him. The streets were wet, it had rained by day. Dreary enough he could tolerate being outside. He loved this bloody city. The night was young. Most weren’t brazen enough to be out this early. He wasn’t most.

He strode down the street, breaking into a run when he found that most of the human population knew well enough to be inside in their beds. He had to get to the church before the bastard had time to wake up. Ashes to ashes—he’d show him dust to dust.

***

A bloody century, and he still wasn’t ready for what he saw.

The heavy door of the church was a gateway to some sort of Hell. Even before his first careful steps in, the scent of dead, spoiling blood and decomposition hit him, hard enough he tensed for a moment, and forced himself to breathe it in—wasn’t going to put the fear in this Angelus if he retched when he entered.

Once he could breathe it in without his gag reflex activating, he took a step in, the floor feeling sticky with blood. The corpses were lined up in the pews and the choir risers, or, most of them were. There were hands in the aisle, clasped in prayer. A face that had been slapped over one of the faces on age stained glass window, and had slid down, leaving blood streaked down the glass, and a pile of flesh. And then there was what littered the aisle. Bits and pieces of women, flesh that didn’t initially seem flesh. But whatever state of destruction, all the heads had a space in the pews. The mother superior, by the look of her, was in the baptismal font, her torso open, rib cage exposed and cracked open, as the waterer ran red through her chest. A priest’s head, eyes wide, mouth open in a final scream, his blood dripping into the communion cup.

The authorities hadn’t found them yet, why would they? None of the nuns had much business with the city, and that priest was likely not doing any sermons elsewhere until the weekend. The flesh-eating demon that had tipped him off wasn’t going to suffice for cleanup, even if he brought all his little friends, Spike realized. The demon said there were bodies. He left out the scope—what words would impart what this was?

He walked with trepidation until he stood before the aisle, as though death itself permeated this space, and he had to be careful, or it would take him.

Angelus travelled alone, or with a woman who got off on it. Two vampires, no extras meant this had to have taken most of his night. It was likely he was still in here, sleeping in the sanctuary, or something, and that was going to be his undoing.

An eerie whisper began, latin carried by the wind of breath. _Deliverance. Pleas for deliverance_. _“Dona eis requiem…”_ His latin was a little shaky, but that was a plea for peace. He knew enough places in this city were haunted—some by his hand. Also knew ghosts enough to know she’d be particularly volatile tonight—probably didn’t yet know she was dead. He didn’t speak to the ghost until he saw her. A girl, caked in blood. Dress hanging off her in swathes of bloody fabric. Her back, torn open into furrows, was totally exposed by the torn fabric, as were most of her thighs, also coated in blood, bruises by the looks of it beneath it all, the black and purple hidden in layers of red.

Her dark hair was matted together with blood. She didn’t face him. Likely didn’t hear him. It was the first he’d seen of a ghost so bloody. Normally they reverted to whatever they were the second before, or else they went for shock, and carried their own heads, but seemed transparent, greyer. She seemed real. He couldn’t see through her, even if, paradoxically, she looked on the verge of disappearing.

The smell of her blood hit him. Dead but not spoiled, except with _him._ All of her reeked of another vampire. She wasn’t a ghost. He’d _sired_ one of them.

His skin prickled, and his face tried to shift, his forehead aching from trying to hold it back. His jaw clenched. This didn’t happen in _his_ city. He’d killed before. He tortured the men who’d mocked him with railroad spikes to earn his name. _This?_ This was unthinkable. Angelus had killed everyone in this church in ways that defied the imagination. Some of the bodies couldn’t rightly be assembled into people anymore. Most would never be the same after seeing the aftermath. One woman was left in that wreckage, carrying it in scars for _eternity_. _Why?_ So she could tell the story, when he wanted to show off his grandiose depravity? So he could congratulate himself that someone, as far as she ran, would never escape this night at the church?

She staggered forward on unsteady legs, toward the altar, the priest’s dripping head staring at her, wide-eyed. Spike walked forward at the same speed, flinching and then hurrying closer when her knees gave out, and she fell with a sickening _thud._

His louder footfalls lacerated her to another’s presence, and her reaction was immediate. She threw herself against the altar, as far out of his reach as possible, panicked eyes scanning the room, trying to spot whoever would hurt her next. She hissed when her back came into contact with the altar cloth, the cross searing her back. She left a red stain behind.

Her face was disquietingly untouched. It was all he hadn’t touched, but for a deep bruise on her throat and jaw. Angelus must have wanted to humanize her—must have given him power, knowing what he did to another person. Her red-rimmed eyes searched him fervently, searched for who or what he was. He couldn’t look away from her, nor move. The dress was torn down the front enough her chest was visible, down to her ribs. Torn up one seam at the side, then down on a diagonal, so one of her legs was covered, the other exposed. There was so much blood. He could hardly fathom how weak she had to be, with so little left in her.

Her voice was hoarse, and hardly came out louder than her whispered, fervent prayers, “are you an angel?” She asked, “sent by all the saints, to punish trespasses?” She asked, “I didn’t want to bring the devil to the church… promise you’ll punish him once we’re done?” There was no fear left. There was absolutely nothing Spike could do to her that would leave a mark, he realized. Angelus was inventive enough he’d come up with something. She didn’t fear anyone else. Didn’t seem much reason to now.

“I’ve come to take you away,” he whispered, the words getting caught and twisted in his throat. He didn’t feel like a master vampire. He didn’t feel like Spike. He felt like a man, standing in the wake of something he couldn’t comprehend, and wanting to change something—anything about tonight.

“Haven’t we reached Hell? Is there really any further to go?”

He finally came a little closer and she tucked her knees up into her chest. Perhaps, there was some small thing to fear. Probably that, if he was an angel, he’d damn her back to him. He feared his face would shift, and she’d know what he was. He was on the verge, the disgust welling up as anger. He wanted to hold Angelus’ head under water in the baptismal font until he turned to ash. His hand would sting for a bit, but Angelus would be gone a while longer than that.

“I’ve come to take you somewhere that won’t hurt,” he promised, “you’ve been hurt too much. It isn’t what we wanted for you. I’m sorry we couldn’t protect you.” He didn’t tell her what he was, so she could make him what she needed. Whatever he had to be, he meant the apology. There was one survivor of the massacre in that house, he recalled. He’d searched for her, because she knew, and he couldn’t have her get back to the watcher’s council. He’d planned to kill her quick—she’d seen enough. She, though bloody, though older, looked like the woman he’d seen drawn in the article one of his underlings had conveyed. They didn’t find her. Angelus, however, did.

He’d let this happen in his city.

He really had let her down that much.

Her eyes were wide, disbelieving. “Was this enough then?” She asked, “I wasn’t able to die for them. Not able to give them mercy. Was this enough?” She plead, as he got close enough he’d have been able to touch her, then slowly got down to his knees, to be at her level.

He offered her a hand. “He was the one who hurt them, love, not you,” he assured her, “we never wanted this suffering for you. You were as innocent as they were, even if he was on your heels. You didn’t deserve this. I want to take you somewhere that doesn’t hurt you,” he assured her. He felt like he wasn’t a vampire for a moment. He was William Pratt, the time he’d begged his mum to let him keep a shivering kitten he found in an alley. They were the same eyes and the same tears he forced back, seeing what the world could do to those who’d never deserve it. It was one of the reasons he’d never believed crosses were for anything but vampires. One of the reasons he’d given up on every icon in the glass.

Where were _they_ when she needed them?

He offered her a hand, “I have two choices for you, love. Either right and just, or as right and just as we can make anything after how we’ve let you down. You can’t disappoint us with either,” he hedged, before making his offer, “I can make all the pain stop right now. And there will be quiet, and there will be relief, and it will end,” he offered, “or I can take you somewhere that doesn’t hurt. Healing will take time. It won’t all go away at once, but it _will_ go away. And you will become strong. You will become eternal. You will become like me, and we will find the devil, and we will turn him to dust.”

“Ashes to ashes,” she repeated, before taking his hand, though keeping the other hand clasped tightly over her shoulder. “I have to save them,” she insisted. There was a strength in her eyes. Something he’d never seen in someone who undoubtedly hurt so much she could hardly think. “Take me away with you,” she decided. He squeezed her hand, before dipping his head, and putting it behind his neck. She moved the other one to join it, getting her forearm extended, then trying to lift her arm and wincing.

“One thing first,” he hesitated, taking his jacket off, then wrapping it around her shoulders. Let her preserve her dignity. He was thankful the tailcoat he’d worn was long and dark. It would cover everything that ought not be seen, when the dress, in shreds, wouldn’t allow her that dignity. She relaxed into the fabric, undoubtedly staining the silken lining, which he just hoped would be soft on her skin. She slid her arm through the sleeve, though she din’t’t move the one clenched around her torso. He didn’t push. Her free arm moved around his neck, slowly as though her muscles were still stiff with rigor mortis.

He slid his arms beneath her, and lifted her with ease. Even if he wasn’t a vampire, he’d have been able to lift her easily. She was so tiny. So easily moved. She held tight to him like he was the only hope left. He felt that, for this moment, he likely was. If she wanted to believe him a negligent guardian angel, come to make things right, that was what he’d be.

She whimpered when he descended the steps. He did his best not to jostle, but he was certain it hurt. He barely noticed the familiar surroundings when he carried her through the city. No once-shattered windows, nor chips in facades. He was carrying her out of Hell. They were not out of Hell until he reached his home, and for once, he was relieved not to have any servants that upkept it.

Heaven, for her, was a small house made of hallways and doors. He went slowly up a flight of stairs with a heated bathtub, a luxury afforded by his tendency to eat people whose assets kept it paid for. He liked the warmth. He paused at a chair, then slowly bent down to set her onto it, the push velvet cradling her, hopefully soft enough. She gasped, then let the air hiss through her teeth, though she made no other sign of pain. Her eyes followed his every move as he started the hot water flowing to the bathtub, then turned on the cold to adjust the temperature. “Let’s get the blood off you, love,” he offered. “This will sting less than cleaning it all off by hand,” he promised. It also meant he didn’t see parts of her that were undoubtedly bloody, that she wouldn’t want another man, or anyone, to see. He couldn’t bear subjecting her to that.

She nodded, and slid her arm out of the jacket, but made no move to take off her dress. He’d set her in with it, then let her take it off. Offer what little privacy it already afforded her. He was a gentleman, once. And now, he was human enough to understand how already debasing what she’d been through would have felt. If she was to heal, this place needed to be different.

He had to be a different vampire than she’d known.

After the bath was full, he lifted her again, then slowly set her into it. The white fabric half-floated, bits of it trapped under her, but most of it untethered. His eyes remained on her face the whole time. “I’m going to get you a dress to change into and some soap,” he told her, so she wasn’t shocked when he left and returned. “I can leave you alone in the bath if you like, or I can stay in here when I return,” he offered.

She nodded, “soap…and perhaps a washcloth?” She asked. After he nodded his assent, she added, “please don’t leave me alone long. I know you will protect me this time, but it feels like the devil is still on my heels.”

His smile was a kind of warmth he tried to muster for her. “Of course, love. I’ll be with you as long as you need.” He assured, before he opened the door, and shut it behind him, leaving her alone in the bath. He walked a little further down the hall, then tipped his head forward into the cabinet he kept his towels in and let out a sigh he’d held in around her, alongside the tears. He was not weak for shedding them. Anyone would, seeing her like that. Seeing the state Angelus had discarded her in. Hurt every way he could fathom that wasn’t fatal. Every way that left the face, Angelus must have needed to know it was a person he was subjecting.

_Fuck._

He let himself cry for a moment, which he couldn’t do in front of her. Not rightly fair to let her see his distress, especially when she was the one bleeding. He was there to comfort her, not the inverse. Especially his distress at the thought of what she’d actually endured. It would have taken an unfeeling man to look on her, think on her and not be brought to tears. She’d thought he came to inflict further punishment. Thought she was fallen for what had been inflicted on her, at every step. No one had protected her. No one could, and he hadn’t involved himself until too late.

Perhaps too late was pessimistic, and wouldn’t help him to care for her now. It was too late to save the dead nuns. Too late to save her family. It was too late to stop Angelus from hurting her. But she wasn’t alone on the sticky church floor, suffering. It wasn’t too late to carry her out of Hell. Maybe it wasn’t too late—as long as she wasn’t dust, he could try.

He took out a couple towels. Ones already dark red, so she didn’t see the blood that came off onto them. Soap. A Washcloth. He wandered into a room he hardly used, where the last lady of the house kept her things. She’d been rather extravagant but one of her nightgowns ought to be light enough not to aggravate the injuries. Bandages were the next order of business. Wounds couldn’t get infected, so they’d just use soap to clean them, and he’d bandage what he could, to minimize the scarring. Some of it would have needed stitches, but she was in no state for him to even attempt it. It would be torture.

He knocked, and called through the door, “I’ve got the towels,” before he entered. He’d get her used to knowing who was coming. Maybe she wouldn’t hear the devil in his footsteps. When he opened the door, her head snapped around to make sure, but the rest of her was all submerged in the water. She was still—a forceful reminder to him she was dead, both of them were. He offered her the soap and the cloth, setting the towels and dress down beside the chair he decided he’d keep her company from. She spoke long moments after he’d sat down. “I… I can’t get it off. My arm…”

He walked to her, seeing one arm caught in the remaining shreds of dress, and fetching small scissors from he sewing kit under the sink. It was beyond repair anyway. He reached deep into the water, moving slowly, and avoiding the skin, snipping the fabric stuck around the elbow, just opening the seam all the way to the hip. She tensed, her muscles all clenching as he snipped all the way to the hem, making her pale to just open it and remove it.

She offered him half a smile, “Thank you,” was all she said, before starting to shift it open. He looked away, as she tucked her knees into her chest, either to feel safe, or to cover herself. It had to be important to her, with the way it made her wince. Worth the pain.

“Do you want me to help with your hair?” He asked, knowing she didn’t like to move one arm. When she gave a nod, he moved behind her, again noticing the way she tensed when he first made contact. Touch wasn’t yet safe. He went slow, working the soap through hair that was almost black with blood and water, watching the bathwater tinge more and more red as it washed off. He started at the very ends, detangling it as he went, as best he could and as gently. The blood had matted in it, and it took time, working through it, before he was at her scalp, lathering it in gentle pulses of his fingers. Her eyes were closed, either to escape the feelings of her body, or to pretend they were somewhere else—some other time, or place, or reason. It would be nice if this was something they chose.

He hummed to himself as he worked. The silence was noxious. Finally, when he felt it was clean, he withdrew his hands. “Does that feel better?” He feared she wouldn’t be able to reach her back either, depending on how stiff she was, and whether she preferred to hurt, or to have his hands on her. Either was a kind of suffering, no matter how careful he was.

She was quiet awhile, eyes not opening, before she asked, “how- how bad is it?” And slowly leaned forward so he could see her back. Some of the blood had soaked off, revealing dark bruising at her shoulders, one of which had a deep puncture wound to it. A blade that had passed through from the front, on the side she didn’t like to move. The water showed him how deep the wounds were to her back and ribs, blistered from the cross that had scorched her on the altar. Worse were the finger shaped wounds and bruises around her hips.

“You’ve suffered,” he acknowledged, “and it… I can’t imagine the hurt. But we can get all this to heal,” he insisted. There was no way it would heal without scarring, but he didn’t say that. She didn’t need to feel more changed by this night than she already felt. Didn’t need to feel like others, if she let them see her, would see him laid into her skin. He was glad he was behind her, a hot, bitter, angry tear spilling down his cheek, more only restrained when he bit his lip. “Can you reach it, or would you like me to clean it up?” He asked, forcing his voice not to betray his fury—she didn’t need that from him.

She passed him the washcloth and said, “please be gentle.”

“I promise,” he whispered, “tell me if you need me to stop.” He rubbed the cloth against the soap, and parted her hair, moving it forward over the shoulder that hadn’t been stabbed, where he started. She flinched, and whimpered, and gasped, but she didn’t tell him to stop. He focused on her. The sounds she made. The tension in her muscles— stopping when she flinched until he saw a slight bit of that tension leave. He tried to think of her, and not of what had done all of this. It wasn’t right if she couldn’t be seen without seeing what the monster had made of her—or at least, so he assumed—so he tried not to. _He saw hurt. He saw strength. He saw her_.

He hummed to her, before that lapsed into softly singing songs he hadn’t heard since he was William Pratt. He cleaned her arms next. Staying behind her, because he wouldn’t invade her privacy by moving in front of her—whatever he’d already seen in the church notwithstanding. Took each hand into his, staying at her side, and massaged soap through her palms, then each digit. She was still tense. She would be for a long time. But she was less tense. Flinched less. “I can manage the rest,” she assured him, to his relief.

It spared her the mortification of his hands. He continued to sing to her as he watched her contort herself to try to clean it off. Every gasp, flinch, and pause. Every whimper. He stopped singing when he watched her freeze, heard her breath catch, and intuitively knew she was crying. “Take a break, love. You’ve been so strong. You can rest if it hurts,” he assured her, “you can take all the time you need. I can warm up the water.” Which she nodded at, and he loosened the plug, then turned on the hot water until the bath was both less red and warmer.

“It hurts,” she admitted, “it shouldn’t hurt now, should be impossible to feel.” Her hand retrieved the cloth, and slowly started to clean herself once more. “I didn’t—I didn’t want this… the saints didn’t understand my prayers.”

He offered his hand, and the one not holding the cloth accepted it, used him like an anchor. She thought him a saint, and he’d settle heaven’s debts to her. “I know you didn’t want that. No one could, and no one could deserve it,” he told her, “there is nothing I can do that makes up for not being there to stop it. Saints ought lose their halos for looking,” a note of bitterness crept out in his voice that he bit back, “but it’ll hurt less. You don’t have to do anything that hurts worse,” he promised. “No one will ever do that to you again. Never that kind of hurt…that much hurt.”

Her breath caught over and over, trying to convey her wish to the same negligent saints that let her killer call himself an angel. “I wish…I’d have taken the hurt if only they’d heard my prayers. I didn’t pray for me. Deliverance… I was alone then. I wish I always was if it meant…” she admitted, sobbing audibly this time, and then leaning sideways into their enjoined hands. He moved closer so her head could rest on his shoulder.

Once she was on his shoulder, he brushed some of the wet hair from her face, and assured her, “you’d have been their saviour, love. I know,” he assured her, “you’re not alone now, and I’m strong enough you don’t need to protect me. Can you let me take the hurt?”


	2. The Reverence of Titles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike decides who he wants to be, and gets Dru bandaged up along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter is short, but in my defence I'm a full time student, and school is kicking my ass. 
> 
> Also, this fic, and the way Spike thinks is like, my emotional support fic. I got thinking about it, and this chapter is really full of it, but I think one reason I love them so much is that she doesn't have to be who she used to be to be loved, you know? She doesn't have to go back to the girl she was before Angelus--Spike might not even recognize her. And he loves her for who she is, even when things aren't perfect. even when sometimes, the ways she copes are messy, it make things hard. Even when she speaks to him in their own language, he finds a common tongue. He communicates. He thinks the world of her--describes her as a goddess and the like in canon, and wants to spend eternity with her. He loves her as she is and that's enough. and as someone who can't be who I was in 2014 anymore after someone who came into my life, that speaks to me, that I don't have to pretend it never happened, or that I didn't change to be loved. 
> 
> Wow, that just really went, didn't it? Personal on main hour--I say as though I don't have a fic in another fandom that's more oversharing than this note...
> 
> Anyway, I have a bunch of other stuff I'm finishing, so TMC will be getting an update, and I have another fic from one of the comics (the Spike Comic where Dru briefly has a soul) and also from the comic where Dru gets ahold of the Lorophage and becomes--I think coherent is the best term I have. (I'm not wild on calling her insane, because I'm a psych major, and also because I really think she's more present than anyone without her abilities could be, but something gets lost in the articulation, and if she has flashbacks, that,,,, really would complicate things--being in the past, and sometimes the future. I also know where I wanna go in her backstory fics, so that's coming, I think? I have really interesting plans for the last and second-last fics. Also an S2 au. so once all this classwork is slogged out, I'm going to write so much about her.

She stayed in the bath awhile longer, which he thought seemed to help. It seemed to relax her muscles some, got the blood off. She looked a whole lot less ghostly. Less stiff. It must have helped her muscles to relax some. Maybe it was just good for her being in a place where no one wanted to hurt her—somewhere where he wanted to help her. She trusted him a surprising amount, either because she was starved for closeness, or because he’d had every chance to hurt her already, and he hadn't. Either way, he wanted to do right by that trust, knowing it couldn't come easily. She still flinched any time he touched her, except for the absent minded way his fingertips brushed through her hair. That was comforting. He thought her hair would be soft, when not drenched, nor bloody. 

He’d refilled the bath a couple times, to keep her warm—he didn’t care how long they sat there for. Anything she needed.

They’d been silent awhile when she said, “I think I’d like to get up now,” and he pulled the plug on the bathtub, letting the water swirl away down the drain a final time.

He offered her a towel before he made any attempt to lift her, let her cover herself so he didn’t see anything she didn’t want. He couldn’t imagine how that would feel right now. Kind or not, he _was_ a strange man. “There you are. I have a dress here too, for once we’ve bandaged you,” he offered, back turned while she dried her hair, and then wrapped the towel like a dress around her body.

When he turned back around, she was standing on shaky legs, one hand gripping the rim of the bathtub, while the other held the top of the towel closed. She looked better, less like she was about to disappear, when she wasn't covered in blood, or dressed in the remains of a dress that hardly counted for clothing. Her wet hair dripped water that was faintly tinged red, but he’d gotten most of it off her. By the next time she used the bath, she'd have gotten all of it off. The water would stop running red. Her face was different. When he’d first met her it was hollow and fearful. There was no fear any longer. She just appeared somehow ancient, tired. It was an improvement, by any stretch, some kind of exhausted relief was better than none. “Would you like to walk, or can I carry you?” He asked, seeing that, though she stood, she still wavered. It would hurt. If she'd allow he wanted to spare her.

She reached toward him with her good arm, the one on the rim of the bath, “please?” She asked. He acquiesced, letting her wrap that arm around his neck, then moving his arms behind her and letting her fall onto him, legs bent over one arm. Her weight was comforting, somehow. Tangible. He carried her to the room he planned on her staying in, the one belonging to the lady of the house. No one but Lydia, for the first few weeks after he’d sired her, in 1832, and then Mercy two years later. All the dresses were in the closet for them, which was the draw of that room. He’d let her have her choice of them, if she wanted. Perhaps he'd get Lydia to pick up some dresses for her, if these didn't fit. Or Mercy--Lydia seemed to like less dress to her dresses than he figured a girl who'd tried to take her holy orders would. 

It was a short trip across the hall to her room, the door left open from his trip to get her a dress. He lay her down on the sheets—white, unfortunately, but they were all he had. “I can help you with your back, and anything else hard for you to reach, and then I'll let you get the rest. I’ll stay in the room if you prefer…” he trailed off, just trying to assure her the most he was going to see of her was what he’d already seen in the church or in the bath. There was no need to add the mortification of being seen like this, or at all by a strange man.She deserved her privacy, especially after all she’d been through.

“I don’t care what you see,” she admitted softly, not removing her arm from his neck when he set her on the edge of the bed, keeping his face close to hers. “You can tell what…and your eyes aren’t made of glass. Your halo isn’t sharp.”

He smiled apologetically, kneeling so he wasn’t bent at the waist, but she could keep her arm around him. “I know only what I’ve seen, and—” he bit his lip, trying to find a gentle way to say it, “after all that, it seems wrong to subject you to my eyes as well. Whatever he’s done, love, doesn’t give me licence to see you… or to do anything else you don’t want.” His era and this one had attitudes about this kind of thing. Prized their women for not undoing a button until they were married, even when it wasn’t her choice, and he’d not have used the buttons. She wasn’t some licentious thing like Lydia had been who made it her choice not to marry, and not to care for such things. She was a victim of every sort of brutality Spike could imagine, likely a few he couldn’t as well. Her world owed her a compassion that he doubted the human society would have shown. It was a relief to him, she'd be spared the scrutiny as a part of his London--people would be more caught up in her being something of his charge.

“Your eyes wouldn’t take more away,” she confessed, shaking her head slowly. “They aren’t sharp. I’m not…anymore,” he didn’t know what word died in her throat, but it was enough that he still wanted to be cautious about what he saw or how he treated her. He’d watch her responses. He didn’t want her to think less of herself. 

Before he could say anything, she touched his face, when she had his attention, she told him, “you’re kind. You don’t call the sin mine. I know that.”

He wondered of he really was so obvious about his thought. “You committed no sins, love. If anything, you’re a martyr. I should be… reverent.” He had to summon the word, it had been years since he’d been to church. He was reverent, in some small way, the way where he knew after all she’d seen, felt that she deserved to be cared for. That she possessed an incredible strength. That she'd be incredible, in this life, whatever she chose to do. 

“You are, to see strength…to see a martyr…to give me the chance to protect the next... Your eyes aren’t glass. Your voice isn’t another star, and your halo doesn’t cut. No eyes are safe any longer, and no place, but yours are. I can trust you,” she told him, her voice fading into her throat, though he still caught her last words.

Her faith in him caught him off guard. He was _Spike,_ the vampire on charge of their community in London. He could be vicious, with purpose. Nothing on the level of what he’d seen in the church. She saw a part of him he held back after he died, he realized. She saw a man who _loved._ She saw the man who stayed up all night reading sonnets, writing sonnets. The kind of man who’d have fallen in love with a girl like her, in a world where neither was dead. She saw in him who he _was,_ who he’d been all of tonight, without realizing it.

He might be a monster—depended on your definition—but in those seemingly all-knowing grey eyes, he was a man. More even—he was a saviour.

He wanted to be that man for her.

She released him with her arm, and he collected the bandages, and returned to his place before her, with her sitting on the edge of the bed. “Would you prefer I start where you can see?” He asked, when once again she took his hand. When she nodded, he decided on her shoulder, where he could see something pierced through to her back. He asked her to hold up her arm, as much as she could, and he hated the sound it made when she moved it. She winced, and he kept pressure on it, feeling for anything splintered, and then wrapping it tightly in the roll of bandages. She made a strained sound and her hands curled into fists. It was a long pause before she’d relaxed, and a breath hissed past her lips, white and bloodless.

“That’s the most painful thing I’ll have to do,” he assured. It was the only place where he saw broken bone. She nodded shakily. They waited together, for her to catch the breath she didn’t need, and then ask him to continue. He was able to clean the patch of her neck where she’d been bitten, and then some of the marks on her limbs, before all the rest was hidden beneath the towel. “Do you want me to let you handle the rest?” He asked, not wanting to take the towel off her. She could, if she decided. If she wanted him to help, he’d do everything he could. But he wouldn’t make that choice.

She offered him another weak smile, “I can’t move my arm well,” she gestured to her shoulder. “You aren’t looking for his hands, and you aren’t looking for your own.” She lowered the towel slowly, allowing him to bandage the worst of the wounds to her back, some of the ones to her chest. She took shaky breaths. He stayed in front of her as much as he could, talked absently, so neither of them had to think. She was right about him. He did everything he could not to think about how the injuries had appeared, and he didn’t see her the way he’d seen, for instance, Lydia, the one time they’d had something--for the night it lasted. There was healing, and there was horror, and there was beauty in survival. In thinking one day, the man that did this would be dust, and she'd be eternal.

_Reverence._

She was pale by the end, shaky, but once he stopped and draped the towel over her good shoulder, and turned to let her tend to the few other things she hadn’t asked for his help with, she'd caught her breath at least. She regained a trace of colour in her face, once they’d helped her into the dress. More once he had her under the sheets, and he sat beside her atop them.

Only once she’d settled, did he realize his rolled sleeves dripped bathwater, and there was blood on his shirt. He’d bleach it out eventually. It struck him how unaware he was of himself, almost out of body. He’d forgotten himself, in more ways than the physical, too.

She lay haloed in her drying dark hair, which picked up a loose sort of curl. It struck him all at once that, as a human man, if he’d have seen her as she is now, the colour returned to her face, haloed in her hair, eyes searching his for something to hold onto, that he’d have fallen in love with her. If the pair of them had been alive these moments, removed from the dire circumstance, his heart might have stopped a moment looking at her. His heart had stopped now. It didn't beat any longer, hadn't for decades. Somehow, looking at her, he wondered a moment what the difference was, between the people he’d been. “I never gave you something to call me,” he realized, and chose who he wanted to be for her, “my name is William.”

She smiled, her eyes half-closing. “William,” she repeated, before offering her own up in return, “I was almost to be called _Sister_ , but it isn’t mine and I… I don’t want titles from last night. My family called me Drusilla,” she decided.

Spike repeated it, tasting her name in the air. It was humanizing, having a name to think of her by. She wasn’t the girl from the church, and bound to that place. She wasn’t so bound to an ideal that he could know her only as the martyr. She had a name, a signifier. Something to call her by. That felt better. And calling him William—it kept him divided from the person he’d made himself. It reminded him who he was for her. The names were somehow inextricable. Somehow defining.

He could be William, he thought. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Expect another chapter of this one soon-ish, I say like I didn't say that on stuff that's been un-updated for like a month. Also, I'm watching S6 and I just miss Dru so much. 
> 
> also, the end of this is a little rough. my pacing gets kinda off--I think I'll edit that later. I just was on migraine drugs, and got eager to put the fic out into the world, for reasons (tm). So once my chip calms down, I mightt fix it up.


	3. The Devil Was An Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Spike tries to explain to Dru what she's become, and takes at least 2k before he uses the word "vampire" and her trepidation around the whole drinking blood thing becomes known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter rolls up to ooftown and runs down the town hall sign like Spike does to the Sunnydale sign. Don't worry, it's temporary, but it ends on that note, be warned. Dru isn't having an easy day, and setbacks are to be expected. 
> 
> there are a couple very slight references to suicide--only insofar as that, in the church, Dru wasn't fighting to stay alive in the end. 
> 
> Also, I edited this while just _so_ out of it on migraine drugs.

He sat beside her for some time, trying to figure out how to tell her what she was. In the church, he’d promised her she was going to heal. She was going to be strong. She was going to be eternal. But he’d told her nothing of her condition except that she was like him. How was he to tell her that her God would burn her, or that the sunlight was dangerous, or that she needed blood to survive? And of course, there was the name.

That was always hard to swallow. 

There was a kind of soft silence until eventually she sat up and coughed, cupping one hand over her mouth. There was no blood on her palm, thankfully, but the effect was the same. He had to remind himself not to worry, flinching and cringing inwardly. His mother had consumption—coughing still seemed like it ought to be lethal, even if lethal didn’t hold the same meaning for their kind. She stared at him, as though asking him what was wrong—his reaction told her something was. “My throat,” she rasped, voice gravelly and harsh. Perhaps he'd make her some tea after, get the taste out of her mouth.

He bit his lip. He'd hoped to avoid this tonight, but it was going to be inevitable.

He cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier, feeding her when she was in the bath before it got this severe. She’d lost a lot of blood, and her wounds couldn’t begin to heal until she fed. She would weaken, would suffer, would start to lose herself if she didn’t drink. There wasn't time for him to ease into the worst of their condition. However hard this was, starvation and festering wounds would make it scores worse. 

So he drew on the poet he used to be and tried to find the most palatable words. _ Healing will take time. It won’t all go away at once, but it will go away. And you will become strong. You will become eternal. You will become like me, and we will find the devil, and we will turn him to dust.  _ All promises he made, but there was so much unsaid in them.

These romantic words obscured so much of the truth that there was no longer any time to hide from. He'd tell her as gently as the words existed for. “You and I are the same,” he began, “and we aren’t what we were anymore. Things have changed, enough that now the devil will regret you. We will turn him to dust,” he assured her, looking intently, searching her eyes for some sign of how she took his words. He’d have to watch her. He couldn’t forgive making this night worse. 

She nodded, meeting his eyes like she was trying to hold onto him, and then casting her gaze downward. “I’m not what I was. I knew that,” she replied, her shoulders stiffening. 

He offered her a gentle smile, “no. And it wasn’t right that you didn’t get to choose this. I did.” He tried to make sure she knew he wasn't using change as a euphemism for becoming lesser, that though inhuman, they were still people of a kind. Angelus won if that was what she heard in his words. “I’ve been this way since George III took the throne,” literally a century, in other words, which he hoped would reveal another part of their condition, that they would not age, and would not die naturally.  _ Eternal _ . 

She squinted, searching his face for the markers of a century, which, but for the eyebrow scar, weren’t there. He was unchanged from the night he died. The same man—at least in visage. She even called him by the same name. “You look…”

“Twenty-four,” he told her, “I was to be twenty-five three weeks later.” 

“I’d have been twenty,” she told him, taking his hand. He did his best not to react, and not to do the math. Nineteen. Likely one of the youngest vampires he’d met. Angelus last appeared five years prior. She’d lost so much of so little life. It wasn’t  _ fair.  _ Why her? Why did a vampire like Angelus take interest in a girl her age? __ He had to quell his immediate reaction. It wasn’t helpful for him to break down about it—especially around her. 

Instead, he offered her a sad smile and told her, “you could be. We don’t have to stop the clock there.” The number of weeks away was semantic, like whether he was to call himself twenty-four, or twenty-five. Didn’t really matter in his world, where people lived centuries. Far as he knew, Shakespeare could be around, nearing three centuries—maybe that was why he was so protective of his tomb. 

“He promised eternal torment,” her voice wavered.

“There’s no more torment, but there  _ is _ eternity,” Spike conceded, hoping those weren't synonyms. The start of eternity had, at very least not been more of the same hurt. He just hoped the realities of their kind weren't so distressing they seemed like eternal torment. But he had to go forward. He slowly moved her fingers to the side of his throat, giving her the chance to pull them away if touching him was too much. When she didn’t, he carried on, “our bodies don’t count down in heartbeats anymore.”

She felt earnestly, trying to disprove him. Pressed fingers into his flesh. She first searched him, and then her own throat, shuddering. Delicate, and then fervent fingers pressing into the open wound that had traded life for death. Her breath caught, then released slowly as she drew her fingers away from her throat, seeking his hand. “And we’ve changed,” she said, her voice shaky. He liked that she said  _ we _ , like she understood that however they became, they were the same, and she thought he was a guardian angel. That made it feel safer to tell her the rest. 

“We’ve changed,” he agreed, “the night is ours now. That’s why you woke then. We’re…we’re the other side of what we were. They have the day, we have the night,” he explained, “the day…is not ours, this time. That’s why you never saw me, and I never reached you,” he explained, “one of the trades we make for eternity is the sun for the moon.”

She closed her eyes and took in a breath, "The devil was once an angel," she said, more to herself than Spike, "the day remembers. He never showed himself by day."

Spike nodded, and she continued, “the stars used to force me to see,” trailing off and searching him for answers, “now they let me hear. Will I have to see by the sun when it scorns me?” She asked.

Spike looked to the window, and said, looking at the moon, “I don’t know, love. I wish I did. I don’t have a gift like yours.” And he’d never met someone with one like it, nor known it was possible beyond Mercy's dabbling in magic from time to time, more often than not with catastrophic effects. He’d never forget the accidental demon. Or the sunlight incident. Or the animated dress with a chip on its shoulder seam. What Drusilla had was  _ real _ power. An ability by the sounds of it not yet in her control, but beyond everything he knew. “May I ask what you hear?”

“I lost so much of so few years. You were sick with it. You don’t want the tale to be one of torment. You don’t want less of me… you say we because I saw the sky in you. You forgot yourself, before. You thought your eyes were the same as his, which is why they’re not. You thought it was beautiful that I was alive, but you didn’t read my scars, you don't want to be able to. And you care for my name…just like you chose your own. They make us more than moments,” she listed, her voice slow and halting, as though she didn’t know how much of himself he could hear. “You aren’t so quiet. Whatever they see you, I see you more than a mask.”

He was taken aback, his own words foreign when made so beautiful in her voice. He'd thought it the bare minimum, to show her humanity after the height. He was still far from what she deserved. Her voice, delivering his thoughts in the same soft, almost reverent intonation—was the tone his or hers? “The man I am now is the man I wanted to be,” he confessed. 

“Your heart would have stopped if it hadn’t already,” she reminded him, and if he could blush, he’d have blushed. It was… it was somehow such a comforting thought that every time he’d scrambled for what to say, she’d heard the intent behind it. That she’d held onto that. Climbed behind his eyes to see herself, when she needed. His heart would have stopped again, and she'd hear it. 

He was quiet for a moment. She’d hear more than he had words to say in the silence.

It was only interrupted with another violent cough--more violent for its interruption--and the reminder that part of this conversation was going to hurt. He hadn’t told her the rest, the harder parts, and whatever he said, she’d hear before he was able to soften it with words. “You know what it felt like when you touched the altar cloth. I know that isn’t something you’d have ever been willing to lose. It’s… it’s like the sunlight now,” he kept his voice low, “it doesn’t mean… I meant it when I called you a saint, love. I meant it when I said you were the best of all of us. That you’ve never done anything to deserve this. I…when I lifted you, I thought it would burn me to touch you,” he trailed off. Nothing he could say was enough to temper that loss. 

“The lord will hurt me,” her voice trembled once more. Her eyes back downcast. Her hands clasped together, leaving his again bereft, “what we are… you aren’t an angel, nor am I,” she said slowly, “whatever you intended. However you felt.  _ Sounded _ .” He hated that this cost her the hopes she'd had when they were angels, come to avenge. The relief of thinking her god was still on her side. He hated that her god, like him, stood idly by, even after he hadn’t. Her god looked down and didn't lift an omnipotent finger, except to hurt her for what he hadn't protected her from.

“Please be honest… am I a demon now? Please don’t make the words prettier than they deserve,” she plead. Jus one answer that wasn't so soft, and so gentle as to hide the point.

There was no real softening the truth of it. “Not truly. I’ve met demons,  _ real ones. _ They don’t come from humanity, mostly, nor do they look like them. What we are is between human and demon—we may not be angels by flesh, love, but you are not a demon. You’re not an evil thing. You’re still going to turn the devil to ash. Still going to save people. I need you to know that.”He sounded so desperate, veering from the point. Spike, the _ big bad  _ of the streets of London, afraid to say the word  _ vampire.  _

She covered her mouth, and his stomach sank with his unseating heart through to the floor. “Vampire?” She repeated.

She heard it before he had a chance to take the bite from the word. “I’m sorry,” he said, the second word tearing out his throat like it came out bloody. “It’s just a name… what’s in a name?” He quoted Shakespeare, his voice picking up speed, plaintive. No time for thought that preceded it. “A rose, by any other name would smell as sweet…you, in any other form…” he felt helpless. They’d been William and Drusilla. Now he just hoped she could see them through this new name:  _ Vampire.  _

Her hand flew to her neck, to where Angelus had bitten her, her eyes once again searching. She didn’t get words out—couldn’t, but asked all the same if that was what changed her, what she'd have to do. He nodded, “I’m sorry,” he repeated, softer this time, “yes… that’s how we live. How we heal, and there are ways to do it, I  _ swear.  _ There are so many ways to feed that don’t cause harm…” he heard how hollow his voice sounded. There was blood from the butcher, or from people with consumption, who were not going to survive, but were going to suffer. There was eating people who were causing harm. But none of it felt like it could be enough to reconcile that they fed off of life.

“For tonight, it wouldn’t hurt me to take mine.”

It was the second time he’d ever seen her look on him with fear. Her reaction was near explosive, launching herself to the far side of the bed, sitting up, and wincing when her back hit the headrest. “He- He made me drink,” she stammered, her hand clapped tightly over her neck, “I can’t… I can’t,” she insisted, shaking her head. “Please, you know how it burns,” she insisted. “I…it made me this.  _ Him… _ ”

Angelus had hurt her somehow, beyond the violation of forcing blood into her, changing her, taking away the place she should have been safe.

Spike was at a loss. He didn’t burn _. _ He seldom drank from other vampires. The other remaining romantic poets drank from each other often—it was a pleasurable experience, he’d tried it before. He’d never experienced any kind of burning, not the night he died, not in Lydia’s description, or Mercy’s. 

He’d heard a rumour once, that it was worse when you fought it. Or when your sire wanted it to hurt, depending on who you talked to. Lydia believed it, but he’d doubted. Who really wanted to die? Who didn’t fight to keep their eyes open at the end? He hadn't thought until now how different it was—him trying to stay conscious, and her in the church, however it came about didn't fight the same fight. He fought to live, and she likely fought to end, without this final salt in the would. 

Without his blood inside her. 

_ Fuck. _

Drusilla looked at him like he was a vampire, finally. Not like William any longer. Perhaps it had been a fairytale, that he could be William and this could be alright. That she’d hear him, and that was enough. Real-life was harder, and it took more work. He wasn’t giving up, of course, it just…it had gone so well, until this, and she knew something about their species that he’d never thought was real. He'd let her down, failing to think of it.

He got up off the bed and backed up. “I’m sorry love. I didn’t know it would hurt…” his back touched the wall, and he stopped. “I’ll go to the butcher…not different than eating meat if you drink the blood that he has, and it will help you heal,” he offered, leaving out that his would have helped more, as an older vampire, because it wouldn’t be worth it if it would hurt her. He couldn’t do that to her, not now. Not ever.

He’d never created anyone who didn’t at the very least cling to life enough to drink in death. 


End file.
